


Of Gold and Dust...

by PureLightHealer



Category: Arthurian Mythology, Arthurian Mythology & Related Fandoms, Merlin - Fandom
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gen, Merlin - Freeform, arthurian legends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-16
Updated: 2013-08-16
Packaged: 2017-12-23 16:50:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/928845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PureLightHealer/pseuds/PureLightHealer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A glance at the Camelot the Legends never spoke of...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Gold and Dust...

  **Of Gold and Dust**

****** **

'' _In their love and in their lust,_

_They became nothing more but_

_Fallen angels, wings crumbled into dust.''_

_A_ _land_ _of_ _myth_ _and_ _a_ _time_ _of_ _magic_ _…_  That was the starry-eyed declaration most writers used to describe the olden days of Camelot. The Kingdom had fascinated many upon its subsequent rediscovery. Priceless relics were dug up and examined closely for any hints of the bygone era. Hundreds of texts were dusted off and translated with only too much enthusiasm. Pick any one of them up and they'll tell you tales of legend and lore, of lust (you'd be a fool to mistake it for anything else) and power. It would seem the Kingdom had it all. And you would be inclined to agree if only you could ignore the fact that the lore never led to wisdom, the power never to justice and the lust never to devotion. And certainly not Love. No, there was no place for  _love_  in Camelot.

Not in the famed time of  _Camelot;_ when the King still mourned the loss of his half-sister - his lover, his  _enemy_. When the Queen, exalted for her morality, stole into the night and slipped into the bed of her husband's most trustedsoldier. Where virtue and vice became so inexorably linked that you could no longer tell the one from the other.

And what of Arthur's half-sister? The one who fell astray? Who fell from grace in Camelot but climbed the ranks of powerful  _magic_  which only grew stronger within her? She had laid siege to her own Kingdom and to his throne;  _demanded_  it as her birthright, as the illegitimate daughter the old King would never acknowledge. A bloody battle ensued and finally it was Merlin who drove her out. As she knew he would. Who else but her kin? His magic was always the more powerful, forged on the lives of the many he had annihilated before her. And so she became a wanderer, and Arthur's obsession. Any sighting of her, any rumour and he would send out his knights in search of her. Ordered relentless waves to hunt her. Patrols, scouts... It didn't matter to him. Even at a distance, even as a ghost, she drove him to near  _madness_. He didn't even know what he would do once she stood before him. A prisoner, but she would never bow. He knew her well enough. Better than anyone, or so he thought. No, she would rather drown in her own _blood_ than bow to him on the very throne that had become their  _battleground_. But it didn't matter and so he simply ordered Merlin to send out more men. And more, when those failed to return.

But Merlin knew exactly where she was.  _Always_ knew. It was easy work, to lead the soldiers out, following false-trails and dead ends. She was his own. It had always been foretold that he would be her doom. If she was taken down it would be at his hands. And yet like Arthur, he couldn't destroy her. Dared not. No, if he was cursed to live on in this  _God-forsaken_  place, then so would she. He ensured it. It was once said that he would be the light to her darkness. That prophecy mocked him now, when all was darkness; no light in him, none in her.

No, he'd be  _damned_  before he led them to Morgana. He told himself she didn't belong in Camelot anyway. Not in Camelot, where sinners danced with saints and in a court where a  _smile_ was deadlier than a scowl. But their own dance was just as deadly. The bloody game they played, hellbent on vengeance. They were kin, the same cursed magic flowing through their veins. The same  _twisted_ pull that drew them together despite the vows of enmity they had taken against each other. He still remembers the first time he forced through that barrier. _Her_ barrier. Remembers running his fingers through hair as dark as  _sin_  (his sin or hers?) that fell on white shoulders which seemed to carry a world of pain. They say perpetrators always returns to the site of their crime. And so they came together, night after night, year after year until all that remained of them were imprints on a broken bed and ghostly whispers in a long-forgotten tower.

And what of Merlin's work? The one whose destiny it had been foretold, was to unite the worlds of Human and Magical being? And unite them he did; binding them both in a _choke-hold_  so tight that it was bent only to his will. And so he too was exalted, remembered as the savior of Camelot - or maybe it was the  _curse_  of Camelot…It did not matter because he had brought upon the acclaimed 'Era of Peace'. But that label of 'peace' had been added later, when few were still alive to remember the  _dreadful_ silence that filled the city almost as thickly as the stench of the dead, piled high on every field and in every alley. This was the silence that was labeled as  _peace_. Because when the wars reaped every household dry, no one remained alive to fight or to be fighting. Nothing but the sound of empty cradles rocking in the wind… And this  _deafening_ _silence_ , masquerading as Peace.

And this was the Golden Age of Camelot.  _Gold_ , like the kind that could be seen on a King's tomb, elaborate and grandiose; yet filled with nothing, but decayed remains and bleached bones, finely ground into  _dust_ …

 


End file.
